Letting go of my agenda

I recently learned yet another lesson at the hands of my sweet four-year-old Kate when she woke up in the middle of the night and called out to me. I stumbled down to her room having barely opened my eyes all the way. When I reached out and touched her, I immediately knew she had a fever. Her skin was burning up, and she kept saying she was cold. I got her a cool washcloth and some Tylenol and went back up to bed, hoping for the best.

Not 10 minutes later, she called again, this time in tears. I did my best to comfort her and told her it was the middle of the night and she needed to try to go back to sleep. My tactics didn’t work. She kept calling. I’m not at my best in the middle of the night, and for whatever reason hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, so the last thing I wanted to do was start my day at 3 a.m.

I finally decided to lie down next to her in the hopes that she’d nod off and I could slip out of her bed and back into mine before the sun came up. I settled down next her, and she threw her hot little arm across my stomach and said, “Mama, you’re making me so happy.” 

That was a big “aha!” moment for me. My heart sank realizing I’d spent the last half hour trying to get back to sleep when my sweet girl just needed her mama to lie in bed with her. 

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, our pastor preached a series on hospitality over the summer. One part of being hospitable has to do with letting go of our own agendas. When we don’t hold so tightly to what we need out of a situation, we are freer to see how we might be able to serve someone else. All I wanted to do the other night was go back to sleep, but when I finally loosened my grip on my own comfort, I was able to give that comfort to my daughter. 

Whenever I have a schedule planned for the day (or at least a loose idea of how I’d like the day to go), something inevitably derails the plan. My initial reaction is usually frustration, but I’m trying to remind myself that it may be God’s way of opening my day up to something or someone I wasn’t expecting. 

This idea of letting go of your own agenda can play out in so many ways. Maybe you make time to chat with a quiet co-worker when all you want to do is hole up in your office. Maybe instead of sitting next to friends at church or at a meeting, you find a seat next to someone sitting alone and say hi. Or maybe you step out of your comfort zone and ask someone you don’t know very well over for dinner. Anytime we can put our own needs second, we open the door for God to pour out his grace on someone else through us.

Lauren can be reached at LaurenKDenton@gmail.com. You can also find her on Twitter @LaurenKDenton.